The Brief

The dual strike by unions representing actors and writers has brought Hollywood to a standstill. It’s the biggest strike in more than six decades as the Writers Guild and actors union SAG-AFTRA together represent more than 170,000 workers who are now on the picket lines instead of at work.

Even as union members advocate for better wages, residuals and regulations on the use of artificial intelligence, they know another key benefit is at risk in the short-term: health insurance.

Affordable, generous and increasingly hard to qualify for

The union health insurance is predicated on the notion that members work consistently and lucratively enough to make a minimum amount of money, which makes it difficult to first attain and then sustain.

Often referred to in hushed, reverent tones as the “Cadillac of health insurance” by those who have it, the policy offered by the Writers Guild feels like a holdover from a bygone age.

• No monthly premiums.
• $600 per year to cover the rest of your immediate family.
• Deductibles that are in the hundreds — not thousands — of dollars.

The bar for entry is high. Writers must earn a little over $41,700 in covered union work a year to qualify for coverage and residuals don’t count. The income requirement continues to rise, which coupled with the increasingly uncertain reliability of employment means even experienced writers can have a hard time qualifying.

Writers can accumulate credits by qualifying for WGA health insurance for 10 years and by earning more than $100,000 in covered work. Top earners can rack up three points per year, which can then be cashed in when writers experience a dry spell and can’t make the minimum income requirement, but coverage ends the quarter after the credits are used up.

For example, a writer who qualifies for health insurance for 10 years but earns less than $100,000 can cash in all their points and continue their insurance for up to a year and a half if they are only insuring themselves.

But insuring dependents cost more credits, meaning people with families have less of a stop-gap to fall back on.

As the strike stretches on into another quarter, many union writers are furtively calculating how many credits they have and how long this temporary measure will buy them, if they have credits at all.

Health insurance benefits for actors

In contrast, residual payments do count toward the $26,000 per year that striking SAG-AFTRA members must earn to qualify for health insurance offered by the union — another reason increasing residual payments, especially from streamers like Netflix, are a high priority for members who are on the margins.

Plan premiums from SAG-AFTRA are $125 per month for union members. For a family of four or more, the monthly cost rises to $249 per month or $2,988 per year. That’s less than half of the $6,680 that the average California worker with employer-sponsored health insurance paid for family coverage in 2022, according to a report by the California Health Care Foundation.

Issues with access to these benefits

Members of both unions said it took them years to make enough money to qualify for the union health insurance, while other union members who have worked in the industry for years never have. Both SAG-AFTRA and WGA were approached for interviews about their health insurance offerings. SAG-AFTRA declined to be interviewed and WGA sent LAist a link to their FAQ page.

Could studios and streamers continue coverage?

They could, but it’s unlikely.

In July, IATSE president Matt Loeb called for studios and streamers to offer an extension of healthcare benefits to below the line workers who may lose them if they fall short of qualifying during the strikes. IATSE is not on strike.

“Make no mistake — if the studios truly cared about the economic fallout of their preemptive work slowdown against below-the-line crewmembers, they could continue to pay crewmembers and fully fund their healthcare at any moment, as they did in 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic” Loeb wrote.

Half of the trustees of the Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plan are represented by companies involved in the strike. The WGA’s strike FAQ tells members “there is no Health Fund requirement that the Health Plan extend health insurance coverage during a strike, and Trustees are 50% management and 50% Guild.”

“The moments that I've been at risk of or have lost health insurance in the past pre-strike were not moments when I wasn't working,” said Susanna Fogel, a filmmaker who is a member of both the WGA and DGA unions. “I was working, but there were particulars to the work that just made it fall short or fall in the wrong month to stay covered. So it was just always a stress,” she said.

Should the unions simply drop the income requirement to a lower amount so more members could qualify? Alex Winter, a longtime member of three industry unions, doesn't think so.

“It seems draconian to turn back to the unions and say, well, since we have these oligarchs who are hoovering up all the profits let's try to take what few squirrel nuts we have and scatter them out amongst whoever survived staying in the industry as opposed to fighting to get equitable pay, which is what we're doing,” Winter said.

A new California law could help strikers on the margins

All California workers who lose their employer-sponsored health insurance may be eligible for the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, or qualify to buy health insurance through Covered California, where they may receive subsidies that bring down the monthly cost of insurance. But those premiums will likely be far higher than SAG-AFTRA or WGA plans, at a time when striking workers are making much less money.

But writers and actors who lose their union health insurance as a result of the strike could benefit from a new California law that took effect July 1, 2023 aimed at averting just that situation.

AB2530 received $2 million in funding under the new state budget. To qualify, a union worker must first lose coverage as a result of the strike. According to Covered California spokesperson Craig Tomiyoshi, eligible workers will have their premiums covered as if their incomes were just above the Medicaid eligibility level.

Here’s an example. A single striking worker in their mid-30s who lives in West Hollywood loses their union health insurance during the strike due to the work stoppage. This person goes to Covered California’s exchange to find health insurance. They make $50,000 and are offered a middle-tier “benchmark” plan that would cost them about $320 a month in premiums. Under the new law for striking workers, that person selecting the same plan would pay nothing in premiums – as if that person made $20,385 a year — for the duration of the strike.

Not all striking workers will enroll in a free plan. Striking workers will be able to pick plans that are more expensive than the benchmark plan. If they do, they will pay the difference in premiums.

“At this point, we are not aware that WGA or SAG-AFTRA members have lost health coverage, but if any Californian has lost coverage, we encourage them to contact Covered California as soon as possible,” Tomiyoshi wrote in an email response. He added that people anticipating losing their union health insurance should also get in touch.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2024, another law kicks in. Covered California will end deductibles on the middle-tier benchmark plans, meaning a striking worker could receive free premiums under one law and no deductibles beginning in the New Year, if the labor dispute lasts that long.

Californians are required to have health insurance for at least nine months of the year, or they risk paying a hefty penalty during tax season.

Crews left out

The new law doesn’t cover crew members who are not part of the striking unions but have lost health insurance due to the work stoppage.

A new mutual aid group was created to fill that gap.

The Union Solidarity Coalition known by the acronym TUSC has raised more than $200,000 to give assistance to IATSE and Teamsters members, said founding member Alex Winter.

“I don't know anyone, honestly, in a lot of the primary crew areas who [aren't] in danger of losing their health insurance, and I know a lot of people who have lost their health insurance,” Winter said.

The idea for the non-profit began with conversations between crews and filmmakers, said Fogel, who is a fellow founding TUSC member.

“Because their coverage is based on the hours that they get within a certain window of time, some of the [crew members] mentioned they or people they knew were at risk for not making their hours due to productions shutting down, or if they opted not to cross a picket line, that could cost them their health insurance,” she said.

TUSC has partnered with the Motion Picture and Television Fund and its Entertainment Health Insurance Solutions, which acts as an insurance navigator for people in the industry.

According to TUSC’s website, “MPTF and EHIS will talk directly to members in need, and get them signed up for the health plan that best suits their needs. The TUSC fund will then pay the premiums.”

Fogel says it’s about making sure that everyone in the industry has access to high-quality health care no matter the current industry conditions.

“Every so often when there's one group of people that are going on strike and it's our turn to strike right now, we just wanted to kind of let the other unions know that we consider ourselves to be part of a collective and we hope that they feel that love from us,” Fogel said.

Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and multiple insurance companies he owns have been sued, alleging they failed to disclose an ongoing federal probe to customers while directing policyholders’ money into Walter’s other companies.

The lawsuit lists Walter, Delaware Life Insurance Co., Clear Spring Life and Annuity, TWG Global Holdings and Walter’s Guggenheim Partners investment firm as defendants.

Ira Rosner, a 67-year-old Florida man, brought the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday. He purchased a policy from Delaware Life in April and he had until late May to withdraw his money without penalty. However, the company did not disclose the investigation to him until June,

Rosner is seeking a jury trial in the lawsuit that seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and aiding and abetting fraud.

TWG Global didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Walter has been under investigation since last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission following a whistleblower complaint regarding alleged misrepresented loans made between companies within his business portfolio.

TWG Global Holdings is the holding company through which Walter controls Delaware Life, Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co. and his stake in Guggenheim Partners. TWG Global denied any wrongdoing involving the probe in a statement last month.

Walter and co-owner Todd Boehly sold their stakes in English Premier League club Chelsea this week. Last month, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers in a surprise move less than a year after buying the NBA franchise from the Buss family. The deal is under review by the league.

The Dodgers have been adamant that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.

Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley has won a national education prize recognizing his leadership in improving student achievement in the district.

Brawley will receive the 2026 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, which includes a $50,000 award, at a ceremony in New York City in November.

The McGraw Center for Education Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, which administers the prize, cited the “extraordinary impact” of Brawley and the two other recipients. Brawley won for his work in K-12; prizes are also awarded for higher education and lifelong learning.

“At a time when schools and communities are confronting profound educational challenges, three visionary leaders are demonstrating what meaningful change can look like,” the McGraw Center said.

With about 20,000 predominantly low-income Black and Hispanic students, Compton was singled out nationally for test scores in math and reading that did not fall back during the COVID-19 epidemic and continued to exceed the national and state averages since.

The center noted that Compton’s graduation rates increased from 58% to 94%, and college acceptance rates exceeded 95% during Brawley’s 14 years as superintendent. It also highlighted the district’s expanded college and career pathways and innovative industry and community partnerships.

Last year, EdSource detailed an unusual drama program at Compton’s Dominguez High. Another EdSource article this year highlighted the inclusion of student-centered “calming corners” and learning stations in school renovations.

The McGraw prize, named after the CEO of the McGraw-Hill education publisher, has been awarded since 1988. Other recent California recipients have included Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County schools superintendent; Jody Lewen, president of Tamalpais College, who introduced academic programs at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Stanford University professor and researcher Roy Pea; and Sol Khan, creator of a worldwide free online education and tutoring platform.

The higher education prize went to Shai Reshef, who founded the University of the People, the first nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited online university, and the lifelong learning prize was awarded to Michael Webber, a nationally recognized professor of mechanical engineering and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Inside three water tanks in a tucked-away room at the Aquarium of the Pacific, biologists are tasked with bringing back a population of frogs that once thrived across the state’s mountainous streams but has since reached the brink of extinction.

It’s a program that’s nearly closed out its fifth year with a major milestone: more than 1,000 frogs raised and released into the wild.

That’s more than five times as many mountain yellow-legged frogs — named for the lemon-hued streak along their hind legs — believed to be in the wild when last recorded in 2019, reduced to small pockets of wild streams in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. By the time the frog was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2002, fewer than 100 adults remained in Southern California. A count in 2020 put the number at about 188 in the wild, though biologists say that figure has almost certainly shifted since.

The species’ collapse is tied to a compounding list of threats: wildfire, mudslides, pesticides, fungal disease, habitat loss and the appetites of non-native trout, bullfrogs and crayfish. It’s a decline so severe that biologists consider the species among the rarest vertebrates on Earth.

Staff at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach are working to change that math, one tadpole at a time.

In the latest release, about 653 of the endangered frogs were returned to their native mountain habitat by staff from the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Los Angeles Zoo and the U.S. Geological Survey. Of those, 394 had been head-started at the aquarium — its largest release of the species yet, bringing its total to 1,032.

The frogs were bred at the Los Angeles Zoo’s breeding program, then transferred to Long Beach as tadpoles, where aquarium staff reared them through metamorphosis into froglets and frogs. The process typically takes one to two years, though the species can remain in its tadpole stage for up to five years, making a given frog’s age something of a mystery even to the people who raised it.

A tadpole chills by the rocks in a tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific, where it is being raised before being released into the local mountains, Tuesday, Sept., 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova.

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Long Beach Post

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Inside the aquarium, the water is engineered to mimic the mountains it’s standing in — kept near 60 degrees in summer, the temperature currently found in the streams the frogs call home, and cooled to around 52 degrees in winter, with reduced UV exposure to simulate the season’s shorter, dimmer days.

The aquarium’s involvement began in 2021, in the aftermath of the 2020 Bobcat Fire, which tore through the central San Gabriel Mountains and destroyed an estimated 95% of the frog’s remaining usable habitat.

“They had salvaged some tadpoles from the fire-impacted areas, and they ended up bringing a handful of them here,” said Erin Lundy, with the aquarium’s conservation team. “And then we also had some captive-bred ones from the L.A. Zoo that year, and that was our first group.”

Since then, the team has expanded to include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which help monitor populations and oversee releases.

Erin Lundy from the Aquarium of the Pacific looks into a tank at frogs as she gets them ready to be released into the local mountains Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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As the aquarium’s tadpole numbers have grown, some are now sent to the Santa Ana Zoo each October to continue growing until they’re ready for reintroduction. Frogs are carefully separated by genetics and population of origin, so each can be released back into its native range and preserve healthy genetic lines.

“I think that we have some responsibility to give the animals the best chance that they could possibly have,” Lundy said, “but this is certainly a species that without a good amount of human intervention would not exist to this day.”

Much of the aquarium’s work is now focused on an even more elusive threat than fire: chytrid fungus, a microscopic pathogen that attacks the keratin in amphibian skin, blocking the salt absorption frogs rely on and eventually causing cardiac arrest. It has driven amphibian populations to collapse worldwide, and mountain yellow-legged frogs appear especially vulnerable to it.

“Some amphibian species over time have developed a resistance to chytrid, and so part of the intention of growing so many animals is hoping to find what gene that is that introduces some chytrid resistance,” Lundy said. Researchers are testing whether frogs can be inoculated before release, or whether introducing different microbes to their skin might help them fend off the fungus on their own.

Tadpoles swim in a tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific as they are raised before being released into the local mountains, Tuesday, Sept., 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Lundy has now been on three of the aquarium’s release trips, watching frogs she has cared for — some for years — carried up into the mountains and set loose into the streams they were bred to repopulate. It is, she says, a strange kind of joy.

“It’s a little bittersweet because, oh no, I’ve been taking care of you for so long, but that is the point, so it feels a little bit like Christmas Day,” Lundy said.

Not every frog leaves the same way. Some, she said, shoot off into the current without so much as a pause. Others linger at the water’s edge beside her for a few minutes before finally disappearing beneath the surface.

“Almost feels like they’re saying goodbye,” she said.

Keno’s Restaurant in Anaheim Hills is a family-run business with a vintage feel — and a 15-pound burrito on the menu.

General Manager Shauna Reyes joined Austin Cross on AirTalk, LAist 89.3's daily news show, to talk about what customers can expect at the decades-old steakhouse that has a cafe twist.

About the owners

Vintage photos of Keno's, back when it first opened, and was a 24-hour restaurant.

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Courtesy Greg Rogers

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Keno's originally opened in 1972, gaining enough popularity to expand into a small chain of restaurants. Gus Cooper helped build and operate the Anaheim Hills location since its opening in 1980. The Anaheim Hills location eventually changed hands to Gus' nephew, Steve Cooper, in 1993. Steve Cooper and his family have been running Keno's ever since.

What it's like being a Keno's customer

Photo of Keno's lounge and steakhouse section.

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Courtesy Greg Rogers

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According to Reyes, the ambiance and customer connections are what set Keno's apart.

You can experience the cafe, with a bustling diner feel, or step into their steakhouse, which has a fireplace Reyes says was inspired by the Peppermill in Las Vegas.

Restaurant details

• Keno’s has a live event schedule that includes solo acoustic sets and a Frank Sinatra cover artist.
• In addition to the 15-pound burrito, you can also find a 32-ounce Tomahawk steak on the menu.

Menu items we tried

• The Lumberjack Breakfast
• Monte Cristo
• California Chicken Sandwich
• Tomahawk Steak
  

What should we try next?

What should we try next?